


And a Barrel of Gagh

by Arelithil



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Action/Adventure, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Hurt Cristóbal Rios, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, Some Humor, Some angst, and a not insignificant amount of gagh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arelithil/pseuds/Arelithil
Summary: When Cris finds himself kidnapped and injured, he has to hope for help from an unusual source to get him out of his predicament.
Relationships: Cristóbal Rios & La Sirena's Emergency Holograms
Comments: 25
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **CW: concussion, panic attack, self-inflicted injury, _gagh_**
> 
> A massive thanks to my beta Horizon, for providing me with some appropriate Spanish swearing and bearing with me all the months it took to get this together.  
> And also a thanks to all my amazing writer friends who have encouraged me so much and gave me the motivation to finally finish this story

The first thing Cris noticed when he woke up was the hum of a badly calibrated impulse engine reverberating painfully through his head. He’d have to talk to engineering about renewing the driver coil. He thought they’d fixed that a while ago, but apparently it had broken down again. If they didn’t get it under control, the secondary cooling system would fail before long and he didn’t even want to think of the mayhem that would inevitably follow.

The sharp whine of misaligned systems seemed to bore into his skull, concentrating in a throbbing lump behind his right temple. He groaned, trying to get his foggy mind to focus. His senses were dull and only sent signals erratically, if at all.

Was he… lying on the floor? Why on earth was he not in his bed? Had he gotten drunk and passed out? But no, he hadn’t gotten black-out drunk since his friends had dragged him off to celebrate his promotion to commander. He never drank on duty, which, as an XO, was practically all day every day. Maybe a glass of wine at the senior staff dinners that Pops liked to host, but never enough to get drunk. But if the stupor and headache weren’t from a bender, why the fuck was he passed out on the floor?

The pain behind his temple flared up again and Cris swore under his breath. He tried to reach up to rub his smarting head, but his wrist caught on something.

A burst of adrenaline threw his previously sluggish sensory input into sharp relief. He realized with a sudden sinking feeling that he was lying on his side on a rough, grated metal floor that stank to high heaven — and that his hands were trapped in cool metal shackles behind his back.

_Fuck._

His eyes flew open, but they were covered by rough cloth. A sack pulled over his head? Where the hell was he?

A sudden jerk went through the floor and sent Cris bouncing painfully against the metal grates. From somewhere far away he could hear what sounded like an EPS conduit overheating and blowing out some valves. The noise of the strained machinery set Cris’s teeth on edge, but over the din he thought he could make out the faint sound of angry voices yelling at each other. In Klingon.

Cris groaned as memories started coalescing in his mind, still jumbled and in bits and pieces. A Klingon scout ship decloaking off his starboard bow. Frantic shooting and shouting. Blinding pain in his right temple…

He… he’d been on an away mission and… and some Klingon lowlifes had… boarded his shuttle and must have taken him prisoner. The smell around him, which was increasingly hard to ignore, definitely fit that picture.

Cris took a deep breath and tried to force his muddled mind to focus. This wasn’t the first time he had found himself in deep shit. If he didn’t make his rendezvous, the crew would realize something had happened and they would trace his last known location. It could only be a matter of minutes until T’Priah came in, guns blazing, busting him out from this latest pickle. Or maybe Pops would threaten the Klingons with the full might of the Federation if they didn’t release his XO on the spot. He could be damn intimidating if you didn’t know it was an act he put on for particularly tough negotiations to hide his true cuddly self. Yes, his crew wouldn’t be far. If he just held out long enough, they would… Vandermeer would… his crew…

More memories started to bubble to the surface of Cris’s still unsteady mind. A jumble of faces, staring at him, stricken, struggling to understand what he was telling them. Lifeless yellow eyes staring up at him from golden faces. Yelling. So much yelling. The flash of a phaser.

Blood rushed in Cris’s ears and he felt like a vice was constricting his lungs. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen.

He hadn’t been on an away mission at all. He’d been on a cargo run for some really sketchy Klingons, transporting high-quality _gagh_ under the radar of imperial customs officials. The scout ship had intercepted him shortly before he reached his destination and these bastards had boarded his new ship and knocked him out.

There was no-one coming for him. Starfleet had betrayed him, and now he was on his own.

Cris tried to catch his breath, but the panic threatened to drown him. He was tied up, helpless and alone. Nobody would miss him. Nobody would ever find out what had happened to him. Who knew what the Klingons had planned for him? Maybe they were hoping to trade him for ransom or make him divulge valuable information. When they realized they’d get neither, there would be no reason to keep their captive alive.

The pain pulsating out from Cris’s temple made it difficult to keep his thoughts straight. A part of him was screaming that he needed to pick himself up, needed to find a way out of this predicament. He’d gotten himself out of worse situations. But at the same time, the panic-fuelled desperation was growing stronger every second. Why fight? Why try to run? There was nowhere to run to. He had betrayed everyone he cared about.

He had all but killed the man he had admired and loved most in the world.

Better just to let the Klingons put an end to his misery. Or let the panic slowly suffocate him, if the Klingons didn’t oblige…

_“You’re not suffocating, babe, it’s just adrenaline!”_

Another memory swam into view. He was sitting on the edge of his bed on _La Sirena_ , trying to catch his breath. Raffi was kneeling in front of him, a hand on his knee, murmuring soothingly, running her other hand through his hair.

Raffi…

How long had it been since he dropped his new friend off at that space station? Three days? He’d said he’d pick her up once the job was done, so she wouldn’t expect him back for another couple of days or so. But if he didn’t make it back, she would be stuck in that seedy place. She’d probably manage to finagle her way onto some poor, unsuspecting smuggler’s ship, but there was also the distinct possibility she’d drown in a mire of alcohol, snake leaf, and misery. She had her own demons to battle, and getting black-out drunk seemed to be her weapon of choice. He couldn’t just leave her on her own!

Another part of the memory fell into place. His new ship’s EMH, sitting on the bed next to him, his hand firmly on the back of Cris’s neck, pushing his head down between his knees. _“You’re going to be alright, Captain, just take a deep breath into your stomach, and breathe out slowly against your lips.”_

With a nigh-herculean effort, Cris managed to roll from his side onto his stomach, and then he somehow got his knees under him, though he kept his forehead pressed against the rough metal floor. Slow and steady breaths. The annoying hologram’s voice echoed in his still foggy mind, counting as he breathed, and he could see Raffi’s brilliant brown eyes looking up at him, their warmth grounding him.

He was _not_ going to die. He was going to get out of here. He wouldn’t abandon his friend!

As his breathing slowed, some more of the fog cleared from his brain. If he wanted to get himself out of this mess, he first needed to assess the situation.

There was still angry shouting somewhere in the distance, but there were no noises in the immediate vicinity. So, he was likely alone. The rough-spun bag covering his face was hanging down pretty loosely. If he pinned down one of its corners with one knee and pulled his head back like so, maybe he could…

It took a few tries, but eventually, Cris managed to contort his body enough to pull the bag off his head. The massive bruise on his temple, because that’s what he suspected was causing his headache, was throbbing painfully, but at least he could finally see his surroundings. Not that that was much of an improvement.

Dim light from a wall console cast the little room in reddish twilight, darkening the shadows more than it was illuminating anything. Still, it was enough to reassure Cris that he was indeed alone. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he thought he could make out stacks of barrels and crates. He couldn’t be certain, but if he’d have to put money on it, some of those contained his cursed delivery of _gagh_. At least that would explain the pungent smell.

Alright. He was most likely in the cargo hold of the Klingon scout ship that had intercepted him some indeterminate amount of time earlier. There was no way to know how long he’d been out and how far away they were from _La Sirena_ by now. Though from the strained noise of the engine and what little he understood from the shouted Klingon in the distance, they couldn’t have gotten _too_ far. Cris hadn’t studied Klingon since his time at the academy, but he was pretty sure his captors were having trouble with their warp engine.

Okay. If he was _really_ lucky, they’d still be within comm range of _La Sirena_ and he might be able to contact the ship’s computer somehow. But for that, he needed to get his hands free.

The heavy cuffs currently cutting into his wrists felt discouragingly solid, but they were also surprisingly cool. Cris frowned. Like most Klingon ships, the little room was heated to an almost uncomfortable degree and he had been wearing the restraints for quite a while. There had to be a reason they hadn’t warmed to skin temperature yet.

Cris sat on his haunches, trying hard to remember what he knew about different kinds of handcuffs. One of his academy classmates had been obsessed with picking locks and breaking codes. Shan had been a true encyclopaedia of restraints and had shown off their skills at every possible (and impossible) opportunity. Cris was pretty sure Starfleet Intelligence had recruited them into its more shadowy corners on the day of their graduation.

What had Shan told him about Klingon restraints? They liked their manacles to be big and clunky to make the wearer truly feel their humiliation. But they usually weren’t held together by any physical connection, only by magnets or forcefields. Cris thought hard, grasping at fragments of memory, but the more he tried to focus, the more the memories became diffuse and vanished in a whirl of images of his time at the academy. Old friends he hadn’t talked to in years. Teachers he’d looked up to and worked so hard to impress. Putting in requests for his first posting —

_No. Not that. Don’t think about that!_

Cris made an effort to control his breathing again and tried to push away the memories, focusing instead on the image of Raffi. He needed to get out of this mess so that he could get back to his ship and so he could return to his friend. He would _not_ abandon her!

He tried to run his smarting fingers around the rim of the shackles, feeling for the place where they connected. It really did seem to be some kind of forcefield. Cris could twist his hands around each other freely and even pull them apart slightly. And… did the temperature drop a little when he did that?

Yes, he was sure of it! As if some cooling system in the cuffs was trying to compensate for the heat generated by whatever was linking the two rings. Hadn’t Shan mentioned something like that once? Cris wracked his brain and tried to remember the details. It was really old tech, abandoned some time ago because a flaw in the cooling system meant the shackles were prone to overheating…

Cris’s head flew up and he looked around the small room, searching for something that he could use to —

_There!_

Next to the dimly glowing control panel, some wall cladding had come loose and Cris could just make out an EPS conduit running so hot the air around it was shimmering.

“And that”, Cris told the empty room with grim satisfaction, “is why you need to properly maintain your secondary cooling systems.”

It took him a moment to find his balance, but then he scrambled to his feet. The sudden movement made his head spin, but he managed to stumble over to the glowing screen without falling flat on his face.

Even from a few feet away, he could feel the heat radiating off the exposed plasma line. This wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it might _just_ be what he needed to get himself out of this mess.

Cris took a few steadying breaths, gathering his determination, then he turned around and pressed his bound hands against the searing conduits.

For a moment nothing happened, but then white-hot pain flashed up Cris’s arms. It only took a few seconds before the connection failed and his hands flew apart, but it was enough to make his eyes stream with tears and his mind go blank.

He sank to his knees, cradling his burning wrists against his chest. Somehow, he managed not to cry out but simply took slow breaths through clenched teeth. Fortunately, some part of the cooling system in the handcuffs had apparently stayed intact, because there was a quiet mechanical groan, and then the metal started to cool down ever so slightly. Well, that was something, at least.

As soon as the pain had ebbed to a dull ache, Cris roughly wiped his sleeve over his eyes and pulled himself back to his feet. Now he just needed to find a way to contact his ship.

The console next to the plasma lines was flickering, clearly damaged by the ambient heat, but it still looked functional. Cris held his breath for a few seconds and listened to the far-off voices that were still screaming about… a fire? Heat? And something about the warp core… Whatever. They seemed to be busy enough that he might risk trying to access the ship’s systems.

Fortunately, Cris had a much better understanding of the layout of Klingon computer consoles than he had of spoken — and especially angrily screamed — Klingon. It took him a short while, but he managed to navigate the system and pull up schematics of the ship, which confirmed his suspicion that both the warp and impulse engines were out of commission. Next, he tried to remember how to access the short- and long-range sensors. What was the correct pathway for that again?

He keyed in a series of commands that actually pulled up a scanner menu, but what kind of scanner wasn’t entirely clear. Cris hesitated, listening to the argument outside the small cargo hold.

Still going strong. Cris was pretty sure someone’s parentage was being called into question, which would probably keep the combatants engaged for a while longer.

Nevertheless, he held his breath as he hit the ‘execute’-button on the screen.

Immediately, a stream of data came flowing in, but the computer was agonizingly slow. As he waited for the scanners to do their job, Cris noticed that his hands were shaking. Whether it was still from the earlier rush of adrenaline or the pain from his burnt wrists, he couldn’t say. Before he could start worrying, though, a ping from the screen demanded his attention.

Apparently, he had run an internal, rather than an external scan, because the flickering screen was now showing a schematic of the room he was currently stuck in.

_Damn!_

Cris tried to remember how to get to the computer’s main scanner menu, but the throbbing in his head was picking up again. Clearly, his concussed brain was not particularly happy about having to do translation work in its impaired state.

Cris ran a hand across his eyes and leaned his head against the metal wall above the control panel. He had no time for weakness! There was no telling how long it would take the Klingons to realize someone was accessing their systems, he needed to figure this out. _Now!_

He opened his eyes again and tried to focus on the various strings of symbols splashed across the screen, but before he had a chance to identify a back-button, something caught his eye. The boxes and crates of cargo all appeared on the screen as indistinct dark blocks, since they were shielded to prevent easy scanning. They were utterly unremarkable, except for one. One of the barrels had a garish, neon fleck stuck to what appeared to be its lid, which was pulsing with energy. Cris couldn’t decipher the description next to the blinking object, but he recognized one phrase: “active subspace frequency”.

Hope rushed through Cris’s body like a bolt of lightning. He looked around in the gloomy space, trying to identify the aberrant barrel. It should be at the back of the room, stuck between two crates… _There!_

It took Cris way too long to stumble his way through the towers of containers. Every inch of his body was in pain, but he gritted his teeth and managed not to cry out. He couldn’t jeopardize his one chance to get out.

The barrel at the far end of the room didn’t look any different from the others. Just one more container of high-quality _gagh_. As Cris ran his fingers around the rim, trying to find the release mechanism in the dark, he cursed his past self for his utter stupidity. How the fuck had he ever thought this was a good idea? Yes, he’d needed funds for all the upgrades he’d been installing on _La Sirena_ , but he never should have taken a job while he was alone on the ship. The money had just been too good to pass up — and clearly too good to be true.

A small, treacherous voice in the back of his mind whispered: _“It doesn’t really matter if you die here or not. It’s not like anybody is going to miss you. You saw to that…”_

Cris inhaled sharply and held his breath, trying to fight down the wave of panic and loathing that was threatening to roll over him again.

_Raffi! Think of Raffi!_

He focused on the memory of his friend’s face, sipping coffee while brooding over some star charts. He owed it to Raffi to get himself out of this mess and come back for her. She hadn’t told him much about her past, just like he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming, but he could read her well enough to know she’d had her fair share of people letting her down and abandoning her. Cris was _not_ going to be one of them!

His shaking fingers finally found the catch on the barrel’s rim and he carefully pried open the lid. The putrid smell of squirming Klingon delicacies made his already uneasy stomach roil and he had to lean back for a moment, trying to steady himself. He tried to breathe only through his mouth as he ran his fingers over the slimy lid in the darkness. After a tense moment, they found a hunk of metal that by rights shouldn’t have been there. It was barely the size of Cris’s thumb, but something about the contours felt… familiar.

Cris held his breath as he gently, carefully, pried the foreign bit of metal off the barrel’s lid. _Easy now. Don’t drop it, or you’ll have to dig through a barrel of worms to get it back…_

In the faint light of the console, which barely reached this corner of the room, the edges of the little object glinted sharply. Cris couldn’t believe his eyes, but yes, that was the characteristic swirl of a cresting wave and curl of a mermaid’s tail that combined into the little communicator which he had designed shortly after acquiring _La Sirena_. Raffi had teased him about the obvious Starfleet nostalgia that had made him create a dedicated comm badge rather than relying on palm holos for communication like a normal person. But right now, he was extremely glad to be holding the little badge.

How on earth had it gotten into his cargo?

Trying to breathe slowly and deliberately to calm his racing pulse, Cris ducked into the shadows between one of the large crates and the wall. He sent a silent prayer to any cosmic force that might be listening and lifted the little communicator to his lips. He pressed the badge to establish a comm link and breathed: “Come in _La Sirena.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my intrepid beta Horizon, who valiantly called me out on my hand-wavy technobabble and made sure there was at least _some_ semblance of scientific consideration. Find yourselves a beta who is not only a great literary support (and source of Spanish) but can also tell you how plasma works :D

The open comm link was crackling with static. Cris couldn’t tell whether his message had gone through or whether it might be getting blocked by something on the Klingon ship. He pressed the little badge again and repeated more urgently: “Come in, _La Sirena!”_

Nothing.

Cris let out a colourful curse. He had to resist the urge to throw the little piece of metal to the ground. If he did, he’d probably never find it again.

His thoughts were racing. He tried to decide what to do, coming up with increasingly hare-brained ideas and dismissing them immediately.

After a few frenzied moments, he suddenly realized the voices outside his little prison had stopped shouting. Cris strained to hear over the blood thrumming in his ears, but there was only the sound of mangled machinery. _What the_ —

A deafening boom made his ears ring and an explosion rocked the ship, throwing him backwards against the wall.

Blinding pain shot through Cris’s head as it connected with hard metal and he slumped to the floor.

_Fuck._

This time it took him a lot longer to recover. When his head finally cleared enough to take in his surroundings, the first thing he noticed was a jumble of voices. The Klingons were shouting again and… there was something else… Another voice, faint and garbled.

“…ptain Ri… …Rios… Captain, are you…”

The comm badge! Still dazed, Cris lifted his hand. He was clutching the little piece of metal as if for dear life. It took him a moment to remember what he needed to do, but then he uncurled his fingers and gingerly pressed the badge to answer the call.

“’m here.”

“Captain! Finally! Are you all right?” The voice was still a little distorted, but there was no mistaking that thick accent.

“You’re the Engineering Hologram?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“What… How…” Cris rubbed his eyes and tried to focus his sluggish thoughts. “Where’s the ship? Are you close?”

Now there was a short pause, and then the same voice, though with a different accent, chirped: “Captain Rios? Yes, we’re only a few minutes away. After they took you off the ship, Emmet managed to detonate a photon torpedo just outside _Sirena’s_ hull so it looked like something on board had exploded and we were drifting, but actually we’re keeping pace with the Klingon ship and —”

The throbbing in Cris’s head picked up in speed. He tried to concentrate on the voice coming in over the comms, but his brain got hung up on one word. “Emmet?”

“Oh, the ETH”, the hologram explained merrily.

Cris groaned. When had they given themselves names? Was that supposed to happen? The Navigational Hologram, because that had to be who currently had the comms, kept chattering away about how he had masked _Sirena’s_ impulse signature so the damaged systems of the Klingon scout ship wouldn’t pick up on it. He was decidedly too chipper for the fact that his captain had been kidnapped and was currently held prisoner by a bunch of mechanically challenged Klingons.

When the navigator started a blow-by-blow recount of how they had modulated the subspace frequency from his comm badge, Cris cut him off.

“Are you in transporter range?”

“Ah.” Suddenly the hologram went suspiciously quiet.

A cold shudder ran through Cris. Of course, that would have been too easy.

“Well, we’ve been falling behind a bit, but your hosts seem to be having trouble with their secondary engine coolant system so we’re still close enough for transport.”

Cris leaned his head back against the wall trying to force his fraying mind to focus. “But?”

“You see, Captain, there’s a wee issue with the targeting sensors. Um… Maybe Ian should…”

Apparently, the communicator was handed over again, because a moment later the engineer was back. “Aye, the targeting sensors are shot. They took a pummelling from a short-range torpedo that breached the shields around the starboard deflector and…”

The words ran together in Cris’s foggy mind. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate, and the heat and smell of the little room were just adding to his general exhaustion.

He didn’t even realize he was drifting off, until a crisp voice from somewhere far away cut through the stream of engineering jargon.

“Captain Rios, are you still with us?”

“Hm?” Cris blinked, and with tremendous effort, he managed to lift his head and pull himself back to the present. “Wha’?”

The comm link apparently changed hands again, this time to the unmistakably poncy voice of the horrid EMH. “The Klingons gave you a vicious blow to the head before they dragged you off. I’m concerned you might have a concussion.”

Cris snorted. “’m fine.”

There was a brief pause and then the Medical Hologram said: “I’m sure you are.” His gentle tone was ridiculously condescending and Cris felt the urge to yell at him, but that might have alerted the Klingons, and they didn’t have time for stupid squabbles.

Cris sat up a little straighter. “I’m fine”, he said again, and this time he actually managed to sound it.

“Good, then you won’t have any trouble counting back from one hundred in steps of seven…”

“ _¡Serás cabrón!”_ Cris took a deep breath. “We don’t have time for this shit. Put the EEH back on.”

“But Captain”, the Medical Hologram protested, “I really think you should —”

“The EEH! Now!”

There was a bit of a scuffle on the other end of the comm link, then a gruff voice said: _“¡Dámelo!”_

Cris’s head snapped up, yanked to attention by the sounds of his mother tongue.

 _“¡Escúchame, capitán!”,_ the Tactical Hologram — Emmet — demanded.

Cris nodded, forgetting for a moment that they couldn’t see him, then he switched over into Spanish as well. _“I’m listening.”_

_“We can lock onto your comm badge, but we need you to lower the Klingons’ shields first.”_

Cris frowned, trying to keep up. _“How? They’ll notice if I try to access critical systems.”_

 _“That’s why we’ll need a distraction”_ , the hologram explained patiently.

Distraction. Yes. That was a good idea. _“Alright. I don’t know what I can do from here…”_

_“That’s okay. Can you get to a control panel?”_

Cris sighed. He _could_ , but it meant getting up and finding his way through the mess of barrels and crates and he was so tired. Maybe he could quickly close his eyes for a second, just to gather his strength…

“Captain!” Once again, the EMH’s voice pulled him back from the edge. “I need you to stay awake.”

“S’ry”, Cris mumbled. He nearly tried to shake himself awake but stopped at the last moment. His headache would not have thanked him. Instead, he took a few deep breaths and forced his eyes open again. “I’m here.”

_“The control panel?”_

_“Right. There’s one here, but it’s damaged. The plasma line next to it is overheating.”_

There was some murmuring on the other side of the comm link, then the ETH spoke up again. _“Perfect. Get yourself over to the panel, Ian is gonna walk you through the plan.”_

As Cris clumsily got to his feet, he noticed that a lot of his earlier panic seemed to have dissipated. The horrible assortment of Emergency Holos was no substitute for a real crew, of course, but right now, Cris was grateful he was no longer alone.

* * *

“You want me to do _what_?” The Emergency Hospitality Hologram stared at his fellow EH in abject horror.

 _“It’s easy”,_ Emmet repeated, a hint of annoyance in his languid voice. _“You just blur the data stream with subspace white-noise, switch the frequency every 18.3 seconds on a rotating band, and keep them occupied.”_

“I don’t know how to do any of that!” The EHH tried not to sound too plaintive. “Can’t one of the others do it? I’m sure Emil —”

 _“Emil needs to keep the captain going.”_ Emmet was clearly getting impatient.

“I’m a Hospitality Hologram”, the EHH started a final attempt. “I wasn’t programmed for covert missions and subterfuge!”

Emmet let out a string of crude Spanish curses and gesticulated menacingly in the EHH’s direction.

Enoch put a soothing hand on the Hospitality Hologram’s shoulder. “You have a great repertoire of social games in your database, right?” When the EHH just shrugged, Enoch continued: “Think of it as…” His eyes flickered blue for a moment as he accessed their shared knowledge. “… charades. Or bluffing. You’re an expert on social interactions, you can do this!”

“But I have no idea how to do any of the configurations to the comms—”

Emmet looked like he was about to swear again, but Enoch quickly said: “I’ll do the technical side. The communications array is tied in with navigational controls, it’ll be a cake-walk.”

The EHH still wasn’t convinced, but he allowed their happily chattering navigator to start pulling him towards the bridge. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw Emmet striding towards the back of the ship where Emil and Ian had disappeared off to the crude transporter pad, taking the comm badge with them. It was nerve-wrecking not to be able to hear the captain, to know he was alright — or at least still alive.

When the Klingons had boarded their ship, they had done something to jam the emergency activation. It had been utterly devastating to receive all the ship’s alarms, to watch through the ship’s sensors as they beat up and dragged off the captain, and to be completely unable to do anything about it. The memory made the EHH shudder. It had been a crazy stroke of luck that Ian had been active already when the attack happened and had managed to avoid detection. And another stroke of luck — and probably mechanical genius — that had inspired the engineer to hide the little comm badge in the captain’s cargo.

Enoch was still going on about subspace distortions when they reached the bridge. The EHH couldn’t help but marvel at his colleague’s equanimity. How was he not a nervous wreck, too? Surely, it couldn’t be callousness; during the attack the five of them had been in silent communication and Enoch had been as distraught as the others. But right now, there was no hint of uncertainty in his manner as he plopped down into the navigator’s chair.

“I’ll set up the link, you do the ambiance.”

The Hospitality Hologram sighed deeply and eyed the captain’s chair with some apprehension. This was Captain Rios’s seat. He, a simple Hospitality Hologram, really had no business sitting there, at the centre of the bridge, like he was commanding the vessel. But their captain was gone, and now it was up to them to go above and beyond their parameters to accomplish a heroic rescue. With another heart-felt sigh, the EHH sank into the captain’s chair and called up the holographic controls. At least this part of the plan was right in his wheelhouse.

He had barely started working on the overlay when Emmet’s impatient voice barked over the internal comms. _“¡¿Novedades?!”_

While the universal translator was still feeding the EHH an approximation of the rude command, Enoch was already reeling off details about communications

The Hospitality Hologram did his best to ignore their conversation and kept typing away at his interface. If they wanted this plan to succeed, he needed to do a stellar job. Fortunately, Enoch kept their ill-tempered strategist occupied and it only took a few minutes, before the EHH leaned back in his chair and allowed himself a satisfied little smile.

His mirror image, projected onto the large front window, was sitting in the captain’s chair. Except it was no longer Captain Rios’s face looking back at him, it was the maw of a full-blooded Klingon. And the bridge was no longer polished steel, holo-controls, and comfortable chairs, it was the gloomy, harsh bridge of a Klingon raider.

The Hospitality Hologram adjusted his posture slightly, and the Klingon in the projection mirrored his movement. No, that was too fussy. If he was going to play his part convincingly, he needed a much more decisive range of gestures. The Klingon’s eyes flashed a blueish white as the EHH searched through his database for some examples of suitable movement. Enoch had been right, he probably was exactly the right hologram for this job.

Alas, the disguise was only one half of the equation. If they wanted this ruse to work, the EHH would have to be _speaking_ Klingon. He heaved another sigh.

Shortly after their initial activation a couple months ago, Captain Rios had accessed all of the Emergency Holograms’ source code and made a number of heavy-handed deletions, seemingly to obfuscate some of his memories that the EH’s had inherited. Unfortunately, there had been unintended side-effects to that botched operation, like the fact that the Hospitality Hologram no longer had access to the linguistic databases that should have allowed him to understand and speak nearly any language on file in the Federation. Usually, the Universal Translator did the necessary translation work for him, but in their current predicament, the tell-tale signs of not-quite-synchronous speech and incongruous facial movements would be a dead give-away.

Of course, he _could_ tap directly into the UT and access the missing language skills that way, but that always left him with a massive headache. Well. Overloaded linguistic processors that needed hours to defrag and realign, leaving the rest of his cognitive matrix operating at starkly reduced capacity, but he preferred using language that didn’t alienate his human charge.

From the navigator’s chair, Enoch was watching him expectantly. Despite his colleague’s generally sunny disposition, the EHH could see an urgency on his face.

Right. His concerns for his own comfort were very negligible with the captain’s life on the line. The EHH took a deep breath, established the link to _Sirena’s_ linguistic databases, and motioned for the ENH to open a channel.

_“Attention Klingon vessel.”_

Out of the corner of his eye, the Hospitality Hologram saw Enoch frantically shaking his head and waving his hands. He looked over and mouthed ‘what?’

Enoch hesitated a short moment, then he balled his fists, pulled a horrible grimace, and theatrically mimed angry shouting.

_Right. Klingons._

The EHH took a deep breath.

_“Listen up, you scum! Get your asses to the bridge right fucking now! If I don’t have your cargo manifest on my screen in two minutes, I will blow your sorry excuse for a rust bucket out of the sky faster than you can say ‘Kahless’!”_

In the navigator’s chair, Enoch was grinning like a kid on Christmas and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.

* * *

Cris’s hands were shaking so much he kept hitting the wrong buttons on the console. The constant flickering wasn’t doing him any favours either, and more than once he had to sit down to fight off bouts of nausea. Fortunately, if he threatened to drift off again, the EMH was always there to annoy him back to consciousness.

The setbacks made his progress painfully slow, but at least whatever distraction the holograms had cooked up seemed to be working. The voices outside of the little cargo hold had hushed a few minutes ago, only for the shouting to start up again further away.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, the indecipherable menu dissolved into the intricate latticework of an EPS grid.

“I think I’ve got it.”

“Excellent. You’ll need to reroute the flow.”

The Engineering Hologram still sounded utterly relaxed. A part of Cris was annoyed that his holograms were apparently rather blasé about their captain’s captivity, but his overriding emotion was gratitude. Without the mechanics unshakable calm, he probably would have collapsed already, worn down by panic and pain.

As if to prove him right, the dizziness that never quite went away suddenly surged again. The ground under his feet started to feel unsteady, and when it tilted to the side, Cris only just managed to catch himself on the wall before he toppled over.

The EEH was giving him some new instruction, but it was impossible to hear over the buzzing in his ears.

“Gimme a second”, he grunted, trying to steady himself.

Of course, the Medical Hologram immediately took the opportunity to fuss over him. “Captain, if you need to take another break —”

“I’m fine”, Cris growled and pushed himself back upright. The dizziness hadn’t gotten better, but he had the distinct feeling that if he sat down now, he wouldn’t get up again.

“Now is not the time for heroics, Captain”, the EMH complained. “You need to save your strength to —”

_“He needs to get this done.”_

Cris felt a tired grin spreading across his face as he clumsily typed instructions into the console. There was a reason why Emmet was fast becoming his favourite hologram.

On the other end of the comm link, the two EH’s started another round of their little battle, Emmet insisting they hurry up, the EMH demanding that Cris needed to rest. Their bickering did nothing to ease Cris’s colossal headache and once again he contemplated just turning off the fucking communicator.

Fortunately, the engineer’s steady voice cut through the noise. “We’re nearly there, Captain, you’re doing great. Now, are you wearing a shirt?”

Cris blinked a few times, certain he had misheard the question. Or maybe his strained brain had hallucinated…

“Captain?”

“I… yes. Of course, I’m wearing a shirt. What…”

“Perfect. I need you to take it off now.”

“You want… I don’t…” Cris rubbed his eyes. “Why?”

“It will be essential to the plan.”

Cris still wasn’t sure he wasn’t hallucinating this whole exchange, but on the off chance it was really happening, he grabbed the back of his shirt and laboriously pulled it over his head. Both his wrists and his head protested loudly against the exertion, but finally he held the sweat-drenched piece of fabric in his shaking hands.

“Okay, what now?”

“The plasma line should have run dry, and there should be an access duct.”

“Um… Yeah, I see it.”

“Good. Now we’re going to block it.”

“… With my _shirt?”_

The engineer sighed. “Well, I would prefer a hyperabsorbent _gamma-krtazl_ sponge, but since our resources are limited, your shirt will do.”

Cris frowned, trying to sort his sluggish thoughts. “But wouldn’t… won’t it just… burn up?”

“Seeing how the cooling system is malfunctioning, the combination of superheated plasma and any major contaminant will have a catastrophic effect on the sensors at this juncture of —”

There was a menacing growl on the other end of the comm link that could only have come from Emmet, then the Engineering Hologram said: “Listen, Captain, it will work, okay?”

Cris felt a dozen more objections bubble to the surface of his mind, but he pushed them all away. He’d trusted his EEH to get him this far. He had to know what he was doing, right?

Gingerly, trying very hard not to scald his hands on the metal tubes that were radiating heat, Cris peeled open the little flap on the now empty plasma line. Cramming the bunched-up fabric into place took some doing and more than once he bumped into one of the searing conduits, but eventually, the pipe was thoroughly blocked.

Cris sealed the conduit and rerouted the plasma flow again. The effect was immediate.

“Something just melted the line shut. The plasma isn’t getting through.”

“Excellent.” The EHH sounded very happy with this result. “Now we just need to wait a wee moment for the pressure to build.”

“Okay.” Cris stumbled back a step and leaned against the wall next to the console.

There was some intense whispering on the other end of the comm link and then the Tactical Hologram was back.

_“Are there any cargo containers near the door?”_

Cris looked up and squinted in the gloom. _“One or two. Why?”_

_“Because that conduit is gonna blow and you need cover. Now!”_

Panic shot through Cris’s foggy mind. He scrambled away from the wall and stumbled towards the door. His feet caught on the uneven ground and he nearly keeled over, but he managed to catch himself on a barrel. Behind him, the EPS conduit groaned loudly as the pressure built ever higher.

With his last bit of strength, Cris dove behind a stack of crates next to the door. Then another explosion threw him to the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to my beta Horizon for making sure I get all of my _gagh_ facts right, and also thank you to Thimblerig for patiently workshopping Klingon insults with me.

The comm link fritzed out as an explosion rocked the Klingon ship. The EHH had to resist the urge to link up with one of the other holos who were on the comms with the captain. He desperately wanted to know that Rios was alright, but he had to focus on the task at hand.

When Enoch re-established the connection, the two Klingons were shouting at each other again, trying to get the situation under control.

The Hospitality Hologram put on his darkest scowl and barked: _“What have you incompetent worms done now?!”_

The larger of the two looked up at him, teeth bared. _“One of the EPS conduits has blown. We’re rerouting plasma flow.”_

The other Klingon looked up from her station. _“The explosion came from the cargo hold. What if the cap—”_

 _“The cargo will be fine”_ , the larger Klingon cut her off with a censoring glance.

Suddenly, there was movement in the background of their holo-feed. The Hospitality Hologram’s eyes went wide as he recognized the figure stumbling along the wall at the rear of the bridge. Even in the low light, Captain Rios looked horrible. Dark bruises bloomed on his naked torso, part of his face was covered in dry blood, and his steps were the unsteady stumble of the drunk or heavily concussed.

Unfortunately, the quicker of the two Klingon’s noticed the hologram’s reaction and started to turn around.

Panicked, the EHH blurted out: _“How dare you turn your back to me, vermin?! You will show me respect!”_

The Klingon jumped and spun back to glare at him.

The EHH took a deep breath. He needed a way to keep these brutes occupied. From the corner of his eyes he saw the scout ship’s cargo manifest scroll along the side of the screen. A sudden idea struck him, and a menacing grin spread across his Klingon features.

* * *

Cris’s heart was hammering in his chest. For a second, it had seemed like the Klingon on the viewscreen had noticed him sneaking across the bridge, but then he continued to scream at the two unhappy figures hunched over the conn.

Now that he had an active comm badge safely tucked in his pocket, the built-in universal translator whispered approximations of the Klingons’ words into Cris’s muddled mind.

Right now, the guy on the screen was shouting: _“Is this form supposed to be a joke? Every toddler knows excise duties are subtracted after value estimation! Worthless dogs! Are you trying to steal from the empire?!”_

The two smugglers were clearly panicking, hissing aggressively and shouting excuses, while the Klingon on the screen bellowed about the correct calculation of customs duties.

Cris tore himself away from the spectacle. His kidnappers seemed occupied for the moment, but it only took one of them looking over their shoulder for any reason and he would be in deep shit. They surely had a whole host of weapons within reach to shoot him or cut him down within seconds, while he didn’t even have a fucking shirt.

Cris forced himself to breath evenly as he made his way along the back of the small bridge. His steps were uncertain, and he nearly fell more than once, but finally he ducked behind the console his Engineering Hologram had described. With most of the EPS grid offline, shutting down the shields should be easy. At least according to the EEH.

The adrenaline rushing through his veins helped to keep some of the throbbing headache at bay, but when Cris finally dared to peer over the top of the console, the symbols on the screen all blurred together. _Fuck!_

He shot a look to the viewscreen and his heart stopped. The customs official was looking straight at him. It was the briefest moment, but Cris knew he had been discovered. He took a deep breath, preparing to fight to the last if he had to.

The customs official looked back at the two smugglers, drew himself up to his full height and shouted: _“I see you’re not only too stupid to pay your taxes, you’re also detestable slobs! I’ve seen cleaner bridges on ships infested with Tribbles! No wonder your systems keep exploding if this is how you care for your vessel!”_

For a moment, Cris held his breath in confusion. He was sure the Klingon on the viewscreen had seen him! Why wouldn’t he say anything?

The two smugglers were growling profanities as they tried to get their paperwork in order. One of them was muttering about the ship being fine and looked like she was about to turn around, but before she got the chance, the customs official bellowed: _“If I don’t have this form filled out in triplicate in five minutes I will cut you into little pieces and feed you to your barrels of gagh!”_

Sudden realization hit Cris like lightning. _This_ was the holos’ distraction! The Klingon smugglers would never have admitted they were transporting _gagh_ , so the only way the customs official could have known about it was from Cris or his crew.

Unfortunately, his captors had drawn the exact same conclusion.

With an almighty roar, the larger of the two Klingons spun around, a dagger flashing in her raised hand.

Cris tried to hide behind the console, but he was too slow. In two long strides, the smuggler was next to him and he only just managed to roll away from her attack. Her dagger struck the console where moments ago his head had been.

Voices were shouting, but the words no longer made sense. Cris tried to get to his feet, but his knees buckled. Fortunately, the unexpected movement meant the dagger aimed for his stomach impaled his shoulder instead.

Cris screamed and stumbled back in pain against the console.

A phaser blast exploded against the back of the console, then another shot seared past Cris’s ear, missing him by a hair’s width.

The Klingon in front of him was advancing again. Cris’s eyes darted around, looking desperately for a way out, but he was too weak and in too much pain and there was nowhere left to run. This was it. There was no escape.

Suddenly, a booming voice rang through the small bridge.

_“¡OYE, CABRONES!”_

The smuggler in front of Cris looked up, startled, and then the viewscreen exploded with searing bright light. The Klingon tore up her arm to protect her eyes and stumbled back with a pained yelp.

_“Captain! The shields! Now!”_

Slumped behind the console as he was, Cris had been protected from the flashbang, and now he scrambled to his feet and spun around. The console’s display came into focus for only a second, but that was all he needed. His fist slammed down on one of the large buttons, there was a discordant shriek, and then the shields were down.

A blood-curdling scream made Cris whirl around. The smuggler was charging at him at full speed a second dagger raised above her head. Cris yanked up his uninjured arm, but just as the Klingon was about to barrel into him, bright lights sprang to life around him and whisked him away.

For a disorienting moment, Cris thought he had gotten stuck in the transporter beam because the white light refused to fade, but then a concerned face — his own face? — swam into view above him, and he realized he was staring at the bright ceiling of his new sickbay.

The moment the realization hit, something in Cris let go of the tension and the terror of the last few hours and then he was out like a light.

* * *

“A- _ha!”_

“Did you do it?”

“Oh. No, sorry. I just found the power source for the cooling system. It’s really quite ingenious when you look at it more closely, because the excess heat produced by the containment field gets redirected and —”

“Ian, can you get them off or not?”

“Sorry, not yet. The locking mechanism is totally fused and the duranium alloy is too robust to cut through safely. I’ll need to run some more scans, if we want to get them off without cutting the captain’s thumbs off.”

“… I find it very concerning that you’d even suggest that…”

Cris frowned. The voices around him sounded painfully familiar.

_“You’d only have to dislocate the thumbs. That’d give you enough wiggle-room.”_

“Nobody is laying a hand on my patient!”

Cris had to stifle a groan. That was definitely the poncy English accent of the horrid EMH. The laconic Spanish drawl had been Emmet, so the other one… What had the EMH called him? Ian?

“I suppose I could try shock-freezing the metal, that might make it brittle enough.” There was no mistaking the thick Scottish burr of the Emergency Engineering Hologram.

Cris pried his eyes open and immediately regretted it as the bright light set his head on fire. This time, he did groan.

“Ah, welcome back, Captain. How are you feeling?”

Cris only dignified the question with a pained grunt. He tried to take stock of the various aches in his body, but he was still dazed and mostly felt like he’d been steamrolled by an avalanche of barrels. Probably filled to the brim with high-quality _gagh…_

“You had a severe concussion”, the EMH informed him. “I was able to heal the damage, but you’ll probably be feeling the aftereffects for a while.”

Cris blinked a few times against the overhead lights and nearly closed his eyes again. The face looking down on him was like a parody of his own. Tidy hair, clean shave, overeager expression — it had been a very long time since that face had looked back from the mirror.

Cris shuddered as the dreaded memories reached their tendrils into his clouded mind and he quickly looked for something to distract himself. “How long was I out?”

The EMH put his hands in his pockets and gave his patient a critical look. “About five hours, which isn’t nearly enough. You need to rest, Captain.”

Cris scoffed at that, but when he tried to sit up, his limbs only twitched feebly, and he fell back against the firm cushion of the biobed. _Goddammit._ He thought he caught the tail end of a smug look crossing the EMH’s face, but then the holographic features settled into professional blandness.

Cris muttered a few choice expletives, then he barked: “What happened to the Klingons?”

 _“They won’t be any more trouble.”_ Emmet sounded very pleased with himself.

Cris couldn’t see the hologram from where he was lying, but when he tried to sit up again, the EMH put a firm hand on his shoulder. “The imperial customs officials took them into custody. They were even gracious enough to overlook your involvement in the matter.”

“Hm.” Cris could feel his brain getting foggier again, when suddenly, searing pain shot up his arms. _“¡Chesumadre!”_

“Sorry Captain!” The Engineering Hologram — Ian? — looked up at him apologetically. He’d been tinkering with the heavy shackles that still weighed down Cris’s wrists, and they had ground painfully against the raw skin underneath. “We’ll have you out of these in a jiffy”, Ian added. “You were very clever to use heat to break the connection, but I’m afraid it overloaded some of the crucial circuits that regulate the internal mechanism…”

The words bled together in Cris’s tired brain. Trying to focus hurt like all hell and he could feel his grip on reality slipping. Ian apparently realized he’d lost his audience, because he stopped explaining and instead started humming very quietly as he worked.

Cris must have drifted off for a bit, because when he opened his eyes the next time, the light in the room was dimmed to a more bearable level and the two holograms were gone. And so were the manacles. Cris tried to lift a hand to inspect the damage, but it caught in the gentle pressure of a holographic regenerative matrix.

There was a static sound, and then the EMH was standing next to him again. “Can I help you with something, Captain?”

“I’m fine”, Cris snapped more out of reflex than realistic assessment, and the hologram gave him that condescending look that made it clear he didn’t believe his captain for one second.

Fortunately, he didn’t argue but simply fiddled with the controls of the biobed and slowly tilted the backrest up a bit. “Let me get you some water, you must be parched.”

As the EMH bustled off, Cris took a look around the room. Ian hadn’t actually left, he was sitting at the round table in the centre of the lab. It was hard to see in the dim light and straining his eyes made Cris’s brain hurt, but he thought the hologram was playing around with the dark metal of the singed Klingon cuffs.

When he noticed Cris staring, the EEH looked up. “Good to see ye awake, Captain.”

Cris nodded a little uncertainly. He still wasn’t entirely sure what to think about his holographic helper clones, but there was one thing he knew he needed to say. “Thank you for getting me out, Ian.”

The smile spreading over the hologram’s face like a warm sunrise sent a pang of nostalgia through Cris’s muddled mind. He wondered how long it would take until he no longer saw so much of himself reflected in these holograms. His former self. The part of him that had died with Pops on the _ibn Majid._

Fortunately, the feeling of eery familiarity only lasted until Ian opened his mouth. “Ach, it was more of a group effort”, he said modestly, the melodious accent making his words sing. “It was Emmet’s idea, really, and Emil did such a good job fixing your head and your shoulder.”

The EMH frowned critically as he returned to his captain’s side. “Hm. Though I have to say, I’d prefer if we didn’t make a habit of this.”

Cris yanked his hand free from its holographic restraints and grabbed the glass the EMH had brought him. The hologram took a simulated breath to start protesting, but Cris cut him off. “The ENH is flying the ship?”

Ian leaned back in his chair, pulled out a piece of cloth, and started wiping down one of his tools. “Aye, he set course for Treha Station to pick up Ms. Musiker. The lad was very excited to get to play pilot for a bit.”

“Emmet went up to keep him company”, the EMH added in a strange tone. Like Emmet was being silly but they had decided to indulge him.

Cris frowned, but before he could ask questions, he was distracted by movement at the table. There was someone else sitting there, half hidden behind Ian. His head was lying on his arms and he’d just turned it so Cris could see his face rather than just a dark mop of curls.

This time it took him a second to realize he was looking at one of the holograms. The shadows under the eyes, tousled hair, and deep lines on his drawn face were all too familiar. Chris did the roll call in his head. Navigation and Tactical were on the bridge, Engineering was tinkering with the handcuffs, Medical was fussing over the biobed’s holo-controls, that left…

“Hospitality?”

The EMH followed his gaze. “Yes, Captain.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

Now it was Ian’s turn to look up. “Ah. You see, Captain, there’s a wee bit of trouble with his linguistic processors. When he linked into the Universal Translator to access Klingon, it overloaded some of his buffers and now he needs to defragment his language processing centres.”

Cris blinked. “What?”

“He needs to sleep off one hell of a hangover”, the EMH supplied.

“Oh… Shouldn’t…” Cris tried to focus, but his head was getting foggy again. “Shouldn’t he turn off for something like that?”

The other two looked at their fellow hologram for a moment, then the EMH turned back to Cris. “I believe he didn’t want to risk deactivating while you were still in critical condition.” A strange shadow crossed the holo-doc’s face. He seemed almost… haunted?

“Aye, I reckon we all dinnae want to go offline only to find ourselves wiped from the system when a new owner takes over.”

Once again, Cris was taken aback by how calmly the Engineering Hologram contemplated his captain’s demise. Then again, it wasn’t like he wasn’t just as blasé about his own death, when it came down to it. If it hadn’t been for his promise to Raffi —

An alarm started chiming from somewhere above Cris’s head. Trying to fight down the bleak thoughts (and fend off the EMH’s annoying concern), he grasped at something to steer the conversation into safer waters. “Why did the EHH need to access Klingon from the database? Did he contact the customs official?”

For a moment the two holograms looked at him with confusion, then understanding dawned on Ian’s face and he said: “No, Captain. He _was_ the customs official.”

Some circuits seemed to misalign in Cris’s brain. He hadn’t had much contact with the EHH so far. His constant attempts at making his captain’s life “easier” and “more comfortable” and “a lot of fun” had turned irritating really fucking fast and Cris had taken to deactivating him whenever he caught sight of him. But in what little interactions they’d had, the Hospitality Hologram hadn’t seemed particularly… versatile. Cris’s muddled mind refused to accept that the annoying hologram he’d found a few days ago fussily polishing the rudimentary table where Cris tended to eat (if he remembered) had somehow turned into the brash Klingon captain he’d seen jeering from the viewscreen.

Finally, he shook his head. “I thought he was some glorified steward. How did he pull that off?”

The EMH clicked his tongue. “I imagine for him ‘stewardship’ of this vessel and all the souls in his care means keeping them safe and well, whatever it takes.”

“Huh.” Cris could feel his mind getting duller with every moment. He clearly wasn’t thinking straight, because before he knew what was happening, he heard himself ask: “What’s his name?”

The doctor put his hands in the pockets of his coat and tilted his head. “He hasn’t chosen one yet.”

“Aye”, Ian nodded, “A bit sad, since the whole thing was his idea. He’s tried out a few but dinnae feel right about any of them.”

“We’ve mostly been calling him ‘Mister Hospitality’”, the EMH added with a slight sigh.

“Thassa terrible name…” Cris’s tongue wasn’t moving as fast as he needed it to, and his eyelids were growing heavier and heavier. He contemplated the sleeping hologram as the edges of his vision started to grow dim. There were deep lines on his forehead, as if he was having a bad dream. Or a lot of pain. Cris blinked sluggishly. The EHH really had gone above and beyond to rescue the ship. And his new captain. All the souls in his care…

Finally, Cris’s eyes fell shut and he heaved a deep sigh. As he was drifting off into the healing embrace of sleep, he mumbled: “Y’should call’m Steward.”


End file.
